Tag Archives: Grief

On May 16th and 17th US bands Rozamov and Deathkings respectively will be playing The Observatory in Santa Ana as part of the three day Psycho California fest which starts on the 15th. The third year of the event will again see over fifty bands from around the world bringing a wealth of genres from doom and sludge to post rock, hardcore to black metal. To mark their participation Deathkings and Rozamov have united to unleash a split 7” via Midnite Collective, bearing a new and exclusive track from each. It adds up to around fifteen minutes of sludge bred enjoyment with the imaginative contagion to seduce and primal ferocity to savage.

Deathkings

The first track is from LA hailing Deathkings, a quartet fusing sludge and doom with experimental voracity. The band consists of guitarist Daryl Hernandez and bassist/vocalist Nicolas Rocha, a pair who had already played together in a previous band before forming Deathkings, as well as drummer Sean Spindler and guitarist Mark Lüntzel, who joined the band after the release of the band’s three-track EP Destroyer. The quartet is currently getting to grips with the creation of their second release, tentatively titled All That Is Beautiful, and with their contribution to this endeavour in the mighty shape of Solomon, it is destined to be a highly anticipate encounter.

Solomon opens on a hypnotic and instantly enthralling stroll of resonating, deeply impacting rhythms skirted by equally predatory strands of guitar and one delicious bass tone. It is a gripping anthemic baiting over which the gruff growling of Rocha grumbles and roars. A fresh gear is then subsequently found, the track prowling with greater relish and urgency whilst dispensing thick and incendiary sludgy enterprise on the way to becoming an evolving cauldron of sinister monotone vocals, melodic toxicity, and doom soaked intensity. It proceeds to haunt the psyche and voraciously devour the senses, never remaining in one strain of confrontation for long but continuously igniting the imagination with its darkly immersive landscape. The track is inescapably compelling, an unrelenting mouth-watering incitement quickly matched by its companion on the release.

Rozamov springs from Boston and infuse their sludge invention with a more hardcore bred ferociousness as well as, like Deathkings, potent atmospheric persuasions. The trio of

rozamov

guitarist/vocalist Matthew Iocavelli, bassist/vocalist Tom Cornio, and drummer William Hendrix, have frequently drawn references to the likes of Neurosis, Yob and Grief through their sound, live presence, and a pair of previous EP’s. Now in the depths of writing their first album, the Massachusetts band offer Ghost Divine to the split’s fury of sound, and from a sonic mist swiftly turns into a maelstrom like intensive examination of the senses fuelled by a bracing turbulence. Vocals quickly vent with a hardcore fury, a raging emulated by the caustic tempest of sound consuming ears simultaneously. At times an unbridled hurricane and in others a lumbering beast of doom lined discontent straddled by acidic flames of guitar rapacity, the track is a bewitching and fearsome rancor but unafraid to reveal unpredictable and engrossing flights of imagination, even if in brief and fleeting moments within its ravenous assault.

Both tracks leaves senses bruised, ears hungrier, and anticipation for their next releases sparked, as well as wishing we were there at both their upcoming performances.

Reeking of causticity and aggressive passion, Grief the debut album from UK metallers Black Dogs, is a barbaric full introduction to a band with the armoury to be a powerful future force within British metal. Rife with grooves which seduce the wounds caused by the violent riffing and rhythmic antagonism, the ten track brawl shows exactly why there is a powerful buzz about the Northern pack. Corrupting the senses with a brew of metalcore, hardcore, and groove metal, Black Dogs is a potent storm of creative spite poised to explode, Grief the possible trigger.

Since forming in 2011, Black Dogs has built a strong reputation through their raw and merciless live shows, performances which has seen the quartet share stages with the likes of Hatebreed, Stray from the Path, Bring Me The Horizon, Feed the Rhino, Heart of a Coward and most recently supporting Heights on their debut UK tour. Their stature and the acclaim around them has been on a swift ascent with appearances at Hit the Deck Festivals and Download Festival only adding to their stock, something Grief will only powerfully accelerate you suspect. Released via Destroy Everything, the release is a stirring and magnetic confrontation, one which though not perfect declares a promise and already rich quality in the band which needs to be closely followed.

The release offloads battering rhythms and snarling riffs upon the senses from its opening seconds, first song Hellhole stomping rigorously through the ear with combative intent and malicious intensity. With a just as immediate groove temptingly veining the track and squalling hardcore vocals grazing its surface, the song tells you all you need to know about album and band, and whether their ravaging is the quest you wish to be chewed up by.

From the impressive start 13 Bastards next takes its predacious share of the senses, sinew empowered riffs and a deliciously malevolent bass sound smothering and confronting ears and emotions. Once again an irresistible groove entwines its primal seduction around the imagination as the vocals unleash a cauldron of passion and venom. Continuing the intense stance of the album with equal strength and quality, the bass an especially vociferous presence, the track makes way for the savage Krokodil. It is of the same stock as its predecessors, and those to come, which brings up the only quibble with the album, a similarity to the structure and attack of songs which needs an attentive focus to distinguish and discover the undoubted individual twists and temptations of the tracks. It is not a massive issue when the album from start to finish is thrilling, but something lazier listeners may flounder with.

Both Savages and Shame enflame the passions, the first as you can imagine from its title is an unbridled fury but one which lurches and twists with incisive riffs and rhythmic adventure around its core groove and intensive riffery to keep things intriguing, whilst the second is a dramatically addictive encounter with a tantalising groove and djent bred dynamics enslaving ears and beyond. Black Dogs has a dirty merciless sound but one which is unafraid to turn in on itself with inventive explorations, this track the strongest example. It is not an experiment which is always stretched enough by the band in songs for personal thoughts, a missed opportunity shown up by Shame but something you can only anticipate will flourish ahead.

The excellent Traitors is another with incendiary grooves and melodic flames scorching the flanks of its straightforward bruising core, invention again raising the temperature and pleasure of the passions. One of many pinnacles on the album it is followed by the title track, a brief evocative instrumental which provides a ready canvas for the imagination to play with. It is a colourful interlude soon succeeded by another discontented vocal and sonic abrasion in the carnivorous shape of She Bites and then Bitterness. The pair adds extra fuel to the passions with their craft and fevered animosity, the first of the two a dark bordering on sadistic threat and the other a less impressive but still easy to greedily devour accomplished ruin.

Ending on the scorching intensity and air perishing fire of Leeches, the album is a stunning entrance and base for Black Dogs to strike on from. Grief simply leaves a deep satisfaction in its wake for its insolent sonic riot and a sizeable hunger for the band’s exploits ahead.

With parts of the UK right now being consumed with unprecedented torrents of rain and storms, intrusive merciless floods, and oppressive land and mudslides, the perfect soundtrack to it all comes in the shape of the debut self titled release from Italian sludge metallers Grime. The six track album is a destructive monster of unrelenting ravenous aural filth, a dirty and vicious assault of expansive grievous grooves and crushing vile riffs to devour the senses. It is arguably maybe not the most original but certainly stands as one of the most severe and brutal which can never be a bad thing.

From Trieste the quartet of vocalist/guitarist Marco, guitarist Lorenzo, bassist Paulo, and Chris on drums, came together mid 2010 with a shared passion for the likes of Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Grief, Sourvein, Eyehategod, and Buzzov’en and the want to create their own intrusive and to be feared sounds. What emerges as evidenced by this release is a sound which leaves a wasted carcass in its wake, their combination of slow towering riffs, caustically scorching grooves, and murderous rhythms an annihilatory assault brought with the uncontrollable intensity of an avalanche. The band which features ex-members of The Secret and Pianoearthquake, has shared stages with the likes of Cough, The Secret, Tombs, Morkobot, and Leechfeast and increasingly pulling in acclaim which their debut can only accelerate.

Released via Mordgrimm the album offers an intense and inescapable maelstrom of sludge metal escalated to inhuman levels with equally abusive doom oppression and stoner melodic greed, all mutated and distorted into a mugging of decaying hungry intensity. It is harsh, at times almost unbearable but ultimately very rewarding. The opening track Self Contempt immediately overwhelms the ear with an insistent brew of corruptive riffs and drum bitch slaps entwined with a plaintive groove as inwardly insatiable and sadistic as the song title suggests. The vocals are sonically acidic within the spewing scrambling growls to further draw every vindictive and venomous essence the track can find within its black heart.

It is an impressive start easily backed up and bettered by following song The Journey. With a lumbering energy and groove as additive as it is manipulative beside the wonderful the ear flaying vocals of Marco, the track leads the senses through a cess pit of staggering onerous intent. It is nasty, it is insatiable and it is glorious dare one say even beautiful.

The album is in full consumptive near excruciating malevolence now, something Charon and Chasm only force home with further brutality and to dehabilitating effect. The first emerges from the lowest downtuned depths to create the thickest and rawest tsunami of bulk dragging intensity. The riffs turn lethargy into an art form, their punishing ponderous crawl borne of the mightiest predator. The second of the pair is a charnel house of festering senses and twisted emotions, a bedlam of dragging visceral insanity. Midway the track lurches into a resemblance of energetic intent to throw unpredictability into the underlining inventive textures beneath the wall of sonic mud, its effect thrusting the already unhinged assault into overload.

Completed by the unbridled spite and ignited stoner energised attack of the outstanding Born Sick and the excellent swamp fresh blistering of Wife Beater, the album is an equally testing and deeply satisfying release. It does and brings exactly what it says on the tin, well the band name, with a quality one can only hungrily feast upon and shout about. It is borne from a similar thick pit of soiled passion as from the neighbouring likes of Noothgrush, Eyehategod, and Sourvein, but fuelled with its own nasty intent to stand apart. Grime is stuff of nightmares and the perpetrators with their debut release of pure satisfaction.

RingMaster 07/07/2012

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